Ben Smith

CAF Venturesome

Charities Aid Foundation

CAF Venturesome have recently support Hubbub Foundation UK (‘Hubbub’) with a £52k unsecured loan investment from our Development Fund which is for higher risk but high impact organisations.

Hubbub use a positive, sociable and collaborative approach to communicate environmental issues focussing on people’s passions. Initially focusing on food, fashion, and neighbourhood. They are building a movement to engage large numbers of people across the country in environmental issues to bring awareness, and most importantly, behaviour change into the mainstream.

They have already hosted some really interesting and exciting projects, like the Oxford Pumpkin Festival which highlighted food waste, and the ‘from a Mother to Another’ a partnership with JoJo Maman Bebe and Barnado’s to reuse baby clothes.

We are really looking forward to seeing what’s next and how their support builds over the months.

A challenge many start ups face is the ability to invest in systems and infrastructure. Hubbub are no exception but realised that they were a central requirement to the expansion plans.

Hubbub is an unusual investment for CAF Venturesome as they are a new organisation with less than 1 years trading; having set up in April 2014. We invested in Hubbub for three main reasons:

The use of the money: The money borrowed is to be used to build the infrastructure to allow Hubbub to scale quickly and sustainably. They are investing in robust social impact measurement. To track tangible changes allow and provide a level of rigour and transparency to their activities that we highly encourage.

History: CAF Venturesome have worked with the Chief Executive over a number of years in his previous role as CEO of Global Action Plan.

“There has been a huge level of interest in Hubbub since our launch six months ago. The challenge is turning this interest into tangible activity. For a start-up charity this involves juggling a huge amount of priorities such as making sure our activities deliver a measurable impact, building our profile and establishing the essential building blocks for sustained growth. The support from Venturesome has been vital in providing us with the crucial resources that allows us to address these issues enabling us to grow rapidly and efficiently”

Trewin Restorick- CEO/Founder of Hubbub Foundation UK

With the infrastructure in place Hubbub will be able to engage with more people and demonstrate the impact they are having clearly. They can increase the number of hubs they operate from more quickly than without the funding.